Decorating one""s face by applying paint, make-up or a mask is well known to the young and old alike. For example, on Halloween, a significant number of children dress in costumes to go about their neighborhoods from door-to-door trick-or-treating. Adults participate in masquerade balls with lesser or greater involvement, but almost always involving some sort of disguise, usually in the form of a mask. Soldiers, hunters, or paint gun enthusiasts also decorate or camouflage themselves to disguise or hide their presence.
The styles of disguise and methods of achieving disguise vary widely. Some methods use paints or cosmetics in the form of colorful pigments suspended in a suitable base. These pigments are spread on a person""s face to create the disguise or the chosen effect. This method requires eventual removal of the pigments, which can be time consuming and messy.
Traditional masks are useful if a person wishes to decorate or disguise his or her face while avoiding the disadvantages of applying pigments. However, masks may be cumbersome and difficult to manage, especially for young children. Moreover, masks frequently interfere with a wearer""s vision, usually because of the distance the mask must be offset from the wearer""s face, creating a tunnel vision effect. Another difficulty encountered, particularly with a full face mask, is interference with breathing, either from air obstruction or, more subtly, from poor air exchange caused by inadvertently trapping air behind the mask and forcing the wearer to rebreathe his or her exhaled breath. Depending on the size of the mask, the mask might interfere with motion of the head or become uncomfortable to wear because of a build up of heat that may cause sweating or other unwanted conditions.
More recently, decals have been developed whereby a decoration is applied to the surface of a small piece of thin, adhesive, plastic film. These decals are small because of the difficulty encountered in handling the plastic film. The film has a tendency to fold over on itself and render the decal useless. Consequently, only a very small surface area of skin is covered by a decal. The decals have also proven to be difficult to remove because of the thinness of the film. Often, the decals do not come off directly; rather, they are removed through the natural turnover of the skin as the skin surface sloughs off over time. These decals may become quite unsightly over time while they slowly disintegrate.
One solution to this problem is the use of a segmental face mask, taught by Leonard et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 5,765,231. However, a drawback of this mask is that relatively large areas of the face are still left exposed, most notably the area around the eyes. In some instances, it is important for a wearer to cover or camouflage the entire face, including the eyes. For example, wild turkey hunters must fully camouflage themselves due to turkeys"" keen eyesight.
Thus, there is a need for a facial decorating or disguising mask that is easy to apply, will cover as much or as little of the face as is desired, is easily and cleanly removed, is non-irritating, and does not significantly interfere with the wearer""s vision, breathing, or motion of the head or face.
The present invention is a face mask suitable for application to a person""s skin. The mask comprises a mask segment of flexible sheet material and a screen element. The mask segment is conformable to at least a portion of the surface of the person""s skin. The mask segment has a first surface, a second surface, and a shaped peripheral margin. The screen element also has a first surface. A decoration embellishes the first surface of the mask segment and the first surface of the screen element. A first fastener on the second surface of the mask segment attaches the segment to the person""s skin. A second fastener attaches the screen element to the mask segment.